


The Collected Memories of a Follower

by signoftheeighthmoon



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-09-17 14:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signoftheeighthmoon/pseuds/signoftheeighthmoon
Summary: All cults are, to some degree, cults of personality. Remove the head of the snake, and the rest will cease to writhe. But a cult is not a snake, and its followers do not cease to be merely because they cease worship; and soon enough, they will find a new head.A journey through the world of Cultist Simulator through the eyes of an unnamed follower, telling the stories of its characters and its world.





	The Collected Memories of a Follower

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time submitting work to the archive, and I'm unused to tagging my works. If anyone has any suggestions for tags, please comment them, and I'll happily add them if I think they're appropriate.

I remember the first meeting I had with Mister J. Oscar.

It was in a coffee shop, small, slightly dark, but out of the rain, and warm. I forget the details of the place; they were of less interest to me than Oscar was. He was exactly the dashing stranger I had always imagined would come to save me from a life of drudgery.

He had written me the week before, mentioning little of me but talking much of an old man we had both known. Strangely, neither of us could remember his name. Another unimportant detail. Apparently Oscar had been named the old man's sole inheritor, taking both a small sum of money and a stack of papers. My name had been included in those papers, mentioned as a promising bright young thing. So he asked to meet me and, desperate to escape the drudgery of my life, I agreed.

We talked over coffee. (I bought it; from the quality of his suit, I could see he was hardly dripping with wealth.) He spoke eloquently, and charmingly, and had the most disarming smile. His eyes shined as he spoke, with genuine passion and vigor, and with a touch of that faintly unearthly light of the beyond. And he had such ambitious plans, to break open the secrets of the world and greedily drink them; to see the mysteries of the deep and the occult and to split his skull with them; to become, in short, enlightened. And he had such charisma that I could not help but be a little taken with his desires; that I could not help, perhaps, but become a little more like him.

We spoke often in the weeks after that. He showed me the papers that had been left to him, told me the Watchman's Secret, and my eyes, too, grew brighter. We had both glimpsed that terrible light, and it was... not beautiful. But glorious. There is no other word for it in our language; what I beheld was glory, and I wanted more. He did, too. We agreed that we would work to bring the light to more, and to taste more of it ourselves. We would take the world.

But he started to sag as time passed, shaving less and sitting more where once he paced and danced, before he stopped showing up to our weekly meetings, and I didn't speak to him again for some time. I wrote to him, but received no reply. I plucked up my courage and called at the boarding house he had been lodging at, and was told he had been gone for some weeks; ejected, apparently, because his yelling in the night was bothering the other tenants. And that was the last I heard of him for some time, until a chance meeting some months later.

He looked better than when I had last seen him, or indeed ever seen him. He was clean-shaven, hair combed back tidily in a manner that was almost attractive, wearing a suit that didn't appear to have been dredged from the tattiest tailor still this side of respectability. More than that, his skin was less sallow, more full and healthy. He had gained weight, though not much. But his eyes were less bright.

We spoke briefly, and he gave me his new address. Mine hadn't changed, nor had much else about me, save a little more age. He agreed to write, and we arranged to meet again for coffee.

When the date came for us to meet, I was worried he wouldn't attend, but he came at the appointed hour. Exactly at the appointed hour, even, which surprised me; never before had he shown an interest in punctuality. We met in what had apparently become his favorite coffee shop in the intervening months, a much brighter and airier space than the dingy place where we first met. He bought the coffee. We made small talk, for a while, before I asked, perhaps a little bluntly, why he had stopped meeting me.

He sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. It transpired that he had struggled with some inner demons during that time. He had stopped working, and started painting. (He did not once offer to show me his work, nor did I ask to see it.) He had lived off of his savings in a dingy flophouse, struggling to sleep for nightmares, unwilling to wake for the misery of his life. And so it had gone for some time, friendless, hopeless, and spiraling into despair.

But at some point, he had stopped having the nightmares, and had slowly marshaled his life back into order. He won back his old job, cleaned himself up, and resumed his old life. His old supervisor, Mister Alden, who he spoke of often, had retired due to his ailing mind. (I am not certain if I believe this. Oscar has a tell, and I think that this was a lie, but I did not press.) He had ascended to a senior position, and was living comfortably in what we had both once considered luxury. He didn't once bring up our dabbles with the occult, and seemed keen to forget them until I brought them up.

When I asked him "What of the Glory?" he seemed confused for a moment, before staring into his coffee. He gave another sigh, this one a little less depressed and a little more exasperated. He told me that he had left that part of his life behind him, that he had responsibilities now, dependents. I was struck dumb. How could a bright spark of a man have been reduced to... this?

I asked how he could possibly have turned away from that light, and his expression grew wistful. He told me only that some day I would understand. 

I still don't.

We wrote each other a few more times, but found we now had little to say to each other. He had moved on with his life, and though I would eventually glimpse the glory again, for the time being, I too moved on with mine, returning to my mundane life.

And that is what I remember of Mister J. Oscar, who never told me his first name.

**Author's Note:**

> I was struck, when I picked up Cultist Simulator again after a few months of absence, by the power of the implicit narratives the game makes through its mechanics. As my character struggled with dread and despair, money slowly dwindling, job abandoned for painting to try and find a shred of contentment, I felt a real tension as I fought to keep this lowly aspirant alive. And when he emerged from the other side of that battle, not unscathed but still alive, I slowly rebuilt his savings, and when I took him to Glover & Glover to beg for his job back, I could imagine him taking a deep breath, perhaps shaving an unkempt beard and getting a haircut, before mustering his will to go debase himself before his old employers.
> 
> And then I looked at the corner of my screen, where I usually keep my cult, and I felt a pang of guilt. I had, before descending into an ongoing fight with despair, found time to found a cult with my starting acquaintance, and I couldn't help but wonder what Enid had thought while I was gone. But I realized that this character wasn't all that interested in maintaining his cult any more. It was a fleeting fancy, now forgotten. He had left those days behind him. It had been oh so long since he had gazed into the mirror of glory, and it no longer held that special fascination for him.
> 
> So I arranged for the removal of Mister Alden, and he ascended to the glorious and coveted Senior Position at Glover & Glover, and that was that. Mister J. Oscar (who never did tell Enid what his first name was) had finished his story, at least in the game.
> 
> But it wasn't the end of the story for my follower, and it wasn't the end of my game play. So I imagined that, perhaps rather than taking place in an adjacent history, this was taking place in the same world as my first descent. (Or perhaps the walls, being blurry as they are, were crossed. This is not important.) Enid would remember Mister J. Oscar, and the weary detective who had once had his case added to his pile would not.
> 
> And that is the story of where this came from. I intend to expand it as I play the game more; that may or may not happen. Who knows.


End file.
